The Peace Bee Farmer

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Fall bee hive management tasks prepare the hives for the
bees’ winter survival. When the beekeeper sets up the hives for winter on a
warm fall day, he or she will make a number of observations and hive
adjustments. First, the hives must be queen-right. We don’t need to actually
locate the queen, just see evidence that the hives have a healthy queen.
Finding eggs or larvae tell us that a queen has been laying eggs recently.
Queen bees reduce their egg laying in the fall and usually stop laying eggs
completely as winter approaches. If a colony is weak, we should combine it with
a strong colony. It is best to take our winter losses in the fall and not risk
losing valuable honeycombs to wax moths. It is extremely important for
beekeepers to manage parasitic Varroa mite levels in the hives. We should
sample the bees and measure the mites using an alcohol wash or powdered sugar
roll test. If Varroa levels exceed a three percent threshold, then a mite
treatment of the hives is needed. Bees in colonies with high mite levels have a
shortened life expectancy, and these colonies often perish during cold weather
due to a lack of sufficient bees to provide winter cluster warmth.

To successfully over-wintering bees, the hives must have
sufficient winter stores of honey, properly placed so that the bees can access
it; and the hives must have adequate ventilation, particularly at the top. Arkansas
hives require approximately 60 pounds of honey stores. Frames of honey should
be on the edges of the fall cluster of bees, and the majority of the honey
should be above the bees’ cluster. The beekeeper will likely need to rearrange
hive boxes or frames to place the fall cluster low in the hive. As the winter
progresses, the bee cluster will slowly move upward, eating through the stored
honey. Remove all queen excluders, and reduce hive entrances as in today’s
photo.

Saturday, September 8, 2018

September brings changes for the bees. Summer flowers, yielding
light colored and mild flavored honeys for the kitchen table, are replaced by
fall flowers, producing robust flavored honeys, which beekeepers usually leave in
the hives for the bees to consume over winter. Adrian Higgins describes how
homeowners can plant flowering plants to provide a continuum of blooms providing
nectar and pollen for honey bees throughout the spring, summer, and fall: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/sep/08/a-boon-to-bees-20180908/.
As well as listing numerous species available for horticultural plantings,
Higgins reminds us to provide bees water and avoid using pesticides. Another
recent publication, About You Digital Magazine, http://aymag.com/all-the-buzz-arkansas-beekeepers-keep-hope-alive/,
features Arkansas beekeeping friends, Jon Zawislak of the University of
Arkansas Extension and John and Corinne Smith of Central Beekeepers Supply of
Russellville, Arkansas. Apiary instructor, Jon Zawislak, explains the plight of
honey bees that are stressed by parasites, pathogens, and loss of habitat. He
explains that public awareness of the importance of honey bees in the
production of our food has brought in many new beekeepers. John and Corinne
Smith supply these beekeepers with bees, hives, and equipment at their Russellville
business. John Smith explains the importance of bees, “Any non-wind-blown crop
has to be pollinated by insects. And the honey bee is the world’s most
efficient pollinator.” Zawislak is quite the promoter of Arkansas honey: “Fresh
raw honey is so different and superior to what sits on most supermarket shelves
that there is really no comparison. If you have ever eaten a true Arkansas
homegrown tomato in the middle of the summer, you understand how different it
is from those tough pink things labeled as a tomato in the supermarket in the
winter. The difference in honey is like that.”

Elsewhere in Arkansas, a black bear was removed from the
city of Conway near the University of Central Arkansas campus (UCA mascot is a
bear). Several members of the Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association, based in
Conway, have experienced bears visiting their bee hives. Today’s photo: September
goldenrod.

Friday, August 17, 2018

His name is Jon Zawislak; it rhymes with “Zah-FISH-Lock,” but
everyone knows him simply as “Jon Z.” Jon’s known by beekeepers across the
state of Arkansas and beyond for his engaging beekeeping training regularly
accentuated with humor. Jon is an Eastern Apicultural Society Master Beekeeper
and Arkansas’ State Extension Apiculturist. In this position, Jon trains
beekeepers and conducts research on honey bee health issues. I have encountered
numerous beekeeper students of Jon’s classes. They are enthusiastic, and they
always feel like they are well-prepared by Jon’s instruction to start their
beekeeping adventure. I have participated in some of his research. In one
study, Jon searched for parasites that might be preying upon the invasive Small
Hive Beetle. Sampling bees, combs, and soil surrounding the bee hives, Jon
found on my farm and several other Arkansas sites a parasite attacking these
pest beetles. The parasite has the potential of being a biological control of
Small Hive Beetles, https://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2011/10/are-beetles-vulnerable.html.
Jon also participated in a study of the effect of neonicotinoid insecticides on
honey bees, https://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2015/02/neonics-questioned_12.html.
While many wanted to blame the widely-used class of insecticides for causing
excessive bee colony losses, Jon made measurements to get an accurate
assessment of the effect of the insecticides. It now appears that the
neonicotinoids are not the sole cause of the losses, but instead one of several
contributing factors. Jon is always available to answer a technical question.
When a reader of this blog questioned the mechanism for honey bees’ passing
along genetic information, I asked Jon to explain for me, https://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2012/09/honey-bee-super-sisters.html.
I am particularly grateful for Jon’s participation with the Arkansas Beekeepers
Association as an active member of our leadership, https://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2015/11/bee-lining-in-ozarks.html.

Friday, August 10, 2018

After evaluating a honey bee colony’s over-winter survival
success, the beekeeper can observe other desirable traits for continuous stock
improvement. The speed of a bee colony’s springtime population build-up is
determined by the queen’s genetic make-up. It is also affected by the age of
the queen and the queen’s successful mating with a large number of drones.
Conditions in the environment also affect spring build-up. Favorable weather,
producing ample pollen from flowers stimulates the queen to lay eggs. The
beekeeper can stimulate the queen in the same manner by feeding pollen
substitute in late winter and early spring. A honey bee colony’s behavior is
largely dependent upon the queen’s genetics. Excessively defensive behavior can
result from inbreeding or Africanized Honey Bee genetics. Drones in the hive’s
surrounding area can influence a hive’s behavior if the drones impart defensive
genes during queen mating flights. Environmental conditions also affect a honey
bee colony’s behavior. A normally gentle colony is likely to become highly
defensive if the hive is attacked by skunks at night. The beekeeper’s actions
in manipulating the hive greatly affect the bees’ defensive behavior.

A bee hive’s brood pattern should contain large areas of
continuous capped cells of pupae with few empty cells. Today’s photo is an
example of an excellent brood pattern produced by a prolific queen. However,
genetic conditions can negatively affect the brood pattern. Inbreeding results
in brood with many empty cells. The bacterial infections, European foulbrood
and American foulbrood, also leave brood with many empty cells. An
environmental factor affecting brood pattern is the presence of Varroa
mite-infested hives in the surrounding area which may spread these parasitic
mites, often by workers robbing weak or collapsing hives. In the early spring,
it is common for bees to fill brood nest cells needed by the queen for egg laying
with nectar. The beekeeper can significantly affect a hive’s brood pattern by
rearranging frames to help prevent brood nest congestion during a strong nectar
flow.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Striving for continuous stock improvement, beekeepers
evaluate the genetic traits of their queen bees to select their best queens as
breeding stock. Observing the behavioral characteristics of the bees in a hive
reveals its queen’s genetic traits. However, the queen’s genetic make-up is not
the only factor involved in what we observe. Environmental conditions and the
beekeeper’s actions also affect the honey bee colony. We can observe the bees’
behavioral traits and select for those traits in offspring as long as they are
genetically heritable traits. For example, a honey bee’s hoarding instinct is a
heritable trait that determines the bee’s intensity of foraging for nectar to
make honey. The color, aroma, and flavor of the honey that the bees produce,
however, is not genetically controlled by the bees. A bee hive’s honey
production does have a genetic basis related to hoarding instinct.
Environmental factors, like hours of sunlight, drought, and dearth of flowering
plants greatly affect honey production. The beekeeper’s hive management actions
greatly affect honey production. Since it takes a large population of bees to
produce a surplus of honey, swarm prevention is important. Equally important
for honey production is the beekeeper’s timely placement on the hive of honey supers
prior to the nectar flow.

When we measure a colony’s over-winter survival success, we
see the results of bees not having a genetic propensity for failing due to
Nosema disease or tracheal mites. However, environmental factors like mild weather
in the winter lead to excessive consumption of stored food. Likewise, old, dark
combs left in the bee hive potentially hold environmental toxins and disease
spores that adversely affect colony health by shortening the bees’ lifespans.
The success or failure of a bee colony to survive the winter depends largely
upon how the beekeeper set up the hive in the fall. Did he or she leave plenty
of stored honey and provide sufficient hive ventilation? In today’s photo, an
attendant worker passes royal jelly to her queen.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Twenty-four beekeepers attended my queen rearing class at
Bemis Honey Bee Farm as part of our continuing beekeeping educational program.
The beekeepers expanded their understanding of honey bee biology and bee colony
reproduction. They learned the conditions under which bee colonies produce
queens, including preparation for swarming. Before a bee colony divides itself
and swarms, it produces a new queen to continue reproducing bees in the
original hive. The hive conditions that lead to swarming are the same as beekeepers
create to encourage bees to produce queens. The beekeepers learned the
importance of record keeping and colony evaluation in producing high quality
queens. By carefully observing a bee hive’s characteristics, beekeepers evaluate
the queen’s traits. They then select hives with desirable traits to become
“drone mother hives” which produce high-quality drones to mate with virgin
queens. Hives that the beekeeper determines to be the best-of-the-best are designated
as “queen mother hives” producing larvae to develop into high-quality queen
bees. The beekeepers learned that to produce these high-quality queens three
conditions are necessary: First, we must select from parent queens with good
genetic traits; next, the queens must have good nutrition throughout their
development; and finally, the virgin queen must successfully mate with a large
number of high-quality drones. The beekeepers learned the actions to take to
develop a queen-rearing program for continuous stock improvement.

The beekeepers followed the procedures involved in producing
queen bees using the Doolittle Method of Queen Production, the method most widely
used for producing queens throughout the beekeeping industry. G. M. Doolittle developed
the techniques over one hundred years ago. Two beekeeper students employ the
Doolittle Method in today’s photo. They are grafting tiny day-old larvae into
queen cell cups that they will place into hives filled with workers selected
for their ability to produce queens. The beekeepers move the grafted cells from
a “cell starter hive” and then to a “cell finisher hive” and finally to a “queen
mating nucleus hive.”

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Suitable nesting places are in great demand for small
creatures. A birdhouse, built by a friend using old bee hive lumber, hangs on
the porch railing of our home. Each year there is considerable competition
between finches, wrens, bluebirds, and sparrows for the use of this nesting
box. This spring, sparrows won the battle and reared a clutch of baby birds.
After the fledgling birds left the nest, bumblebees moved in. Typically,
bumblebees live underground in abandoned mouse nests. Unlike honey bees, which
have colonies containing thousands of members, bumblebees establish small
colonies of several dozen bees. Bumblebees collect nectar and pollen from
flowers, and inside the bumblebees’ nest they build small honey pots to hold
their food stores. Bumblebees, like honey bees, are gentle insects; however,
they both defend their nests from intruders by stinging. When gray squirrels
started gnawing at the entrance to the bumblebee colony’s birdhouse home, the
bees came out in force. Bumblebees attacked and chased all squirrels and
songbirds in the vicinity. They also chased humans from the area. Protected by
my beekeeper’s protective veil and gloves, I removed the bumblebee nest from
the birdhouse. The disturbed bumblebees persisted in continuing their attempt
to drive me away. While bumblebees ignore the touch of a bare hand while they
are foraging on flowers, one would surely not want to handle their nest without
protective gear!

A trap-door arrangement on the birdhouse allowed me to remove
the sparrows’ nest intact. The bumblebee nest filled a vacancy in the center of
the soft bird nest material. Today’s photo shows the neat wax honey pots and
pollen stores. Bumblebees have longer tongues than honey bees; thus they are
able to forage on flowers with deeper, bell-shaped coronas. They carry pollen
in pollen baskets on their hind legs. They have a stinger without barbs.
Bumblebees are important pollinators of crops and wildflowers, but they don’t
produce a surplus of harvestable honey. They are used to pollinate tomatoes
grown in greenhouses.

About Me

EAS Certified Master Beekeeper and Owner of Peace Bee Farm of Conway, Arkansas.
Former President of Arkansas Beekeepers Association, Tennessee Beekeepers Association, and Memphis Area Beekeepers Association. Recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award.